


Silent World

by haganenoheichou



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Idiots in Love, M/M, Making Out, SHEITH - Freeform, Silent!Shiro, Speaker!Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 06:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17017707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haganenoheichou/pseuds/haganenoheichou
Summary: The world was silent. Shiro didn’t remember it being otherwise.Until he meets a speaker whose voice he would never forget.





	Silent World

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a short one-shot piece I wrote for the TEOU Sheith zine which sadly never came to be because of [the human factor]. So, here it is, completely free and ready for you guys to read!

The world was silent.

Shiro didn’t remember it being otherwise. All he knew was that since the day he’d been born, he’d been hearing things – soft whooshes of hover-cars, quiet groans of doors as they slid open, and the steady tapping of people’s fingers on their Screens.

_Your tea._

The words appeared on his screen, and he looked up at the smiling face of the barista behind the counter. With a grateful nod, he sent off a shortcut thank you, to which she responded with an emoji. The new ones this month were pretty wacky looking, but hey, majority vote ruled, and the people had chosen these.

He made his way through the door, stifling a yawn as he carried his cup in one hand and his Screen in the other, his shoulder-bag slung carelessly over his arm. All around him, people were hurrying to get home – most by hover-car and bike; some on foot, like him. He wasn’t particularly well-off, and neither was he particularly smart to have gotten a handout from the government, but at least the area in which he lived was nice. He had moved there several years ago, right after his mother had died – since there was now only one person in the Shirogane household, he had to be relocated somewhere he wouldn’t take up more space than necessary.

It was a comfortable, compartmentalized way of life.

The world around him was perfectly still in its motion – everything flowed. Outwardly, it didn’t appear as if there was any hurry. Hover cars and bikes zipped past with a languid kind of speed, and the people he passed in the streets barely spared him a moment’s glance before returning their gaze to their Screens.

He knew he was a weirdo. He was the only person he knew who liked this – looking up, observing, seeing things for what they were. Or, perhaps, he didn’t see them. Maybe he was just insane. There was just something so uncomfortable about this comfort. Something off-key, something not quite right.

But he had a home, he had a salary, he had a future planned. He had a new arm, all fixed up by his new employer and ready to use to make the Earth a better, quieter place.

He didn’t get to complain.

* * *

The moment he set foot in his apartment he knew that something wasn’t right. There was an atmosphere of disturbance in the air – he _felt_ it, he _saw_ it. Things were out of place. Small things, like his placemat, but they were.

Someone had been in here while he’d been at work.

His heart pounding, he gingerly set his bag down onto the floor and walked further inside, his Screen gripped in his sweaty hand. His right hand tingled, making him want to scratch it desperately.

There was nobody in the kitchen – even though it was apparent that it had been raided. Packets of food goo, flavored and not, tiny energy candies, all strewn across the countertops. Whoever had been inside was either in a hurry or a slob.

Weirdly enough, he wasn’t afraid. His heart was pounding, yes, but he could recognize by the small smile that was stretching the left corner of his mouth upward, that it was excitement he felt. He was _excited_ that someone had broken into his home. With a shake of his head, he turned and soundlessly walked out of the kitchen to the last place he needed to check – his bedroom.

He did a double take when he took in the sight that greeted him as the doors slid open.

On his bed was a boy. A young man, his brain supplied, yet there was something incredibly youthful, even defiant, in the stubborn set of his eyebrows even as he slept. Around him were packets – the same packets of food Shiro had found haphazardly strewn around the kitchen. He had evidently tried to take a bite of everything before collapsing into Shiro's bed, exhausted.

Shiro didn’t know what to do. He stood in the doorway, watching the boy’s chest rise and fall as he slept, his longish black hair spilling over Shiro’s impeccably white pillowcase. His clothing was ragged, dirty, torn in places – and it wasn’t a standard issue uniform that Shiro recognized from anywhere. No, those were _street_ clothes, like the ones Shiro had seen in history books, a reminder of the dark, cacophonous times that was the Old Order.

He had no idea what to do with this. Clearly, this boy was a stray – someone who didn't belong in the clean-cut, sterile world Shiro inhabited. Clearly, he was a thief. Or perhaps, he was merely lost. Either way, he was asleep, and something about him touched the strings of Shiro's heart in a way he didn't want to acknowledge – his heart felt like it was about to squeeze its way out from beneath his ribs.

He took another step into the room and suddenly, he was being pinned against the wall by the strength of a fluttering bird – fierce yet so, so light, the boy pressed him back, one of Shiro’s own kitchen knives on his jugular.

“Welcome back home,” the boy whispered, and Shiro’s startled at the sudden, loud sound of it.

The boy _spoke_. He _spoke,_ as people had done before, like those whose historical garbage Shiro’s generation was still struggling to pick up.

And his voice was breathtaking.

Shiro looked at him mutely. He had no idea what the sounds that came out of the boy’s mouth meant – he knew they were _words_ , spoken words; but how was he to know which sound meant what?

“Pathetic,” the boy spat in his face, and let go, making Shiro slump down the wall just a little. It was quite funny – the kid was short, much shorter than Shiro was, in fact; but there was a presence about him that seemed to take up the entire room.

Or perhaps, it was the _speech_.

The sound was soothing; much more so than Shiro would have ever imagined. Part of him yearned to reach out and press his fingers against the lips that had parted to release such unusual sounds.

The boy cocked his head to the side as he observed Shiro, almost as if he weren’t the curious one here, almost as if it were Shiro who had spoken out loud. The taller man gulped nervously, feeling his mouth go dry.

 _What are you doing here?_ He typed, projecting the letters into the air. The kid looked at him skeptically and then had the audacity to _snort_.

“Can’t read,” he said. When Shiro frowned, shaking his head, as he didn’t understand what the sounds meant, the boy pointed to the letters in the air and shook his head. “Don’t get it.”

 _Oh._ The boy didn’t know how to read. And Shiro didn’t know spoken language. Well, that was an impasse if Shiro ever knew one. 

That didn’t seem to bother the boy at all, though. Instead of being defensive or somehow apologetic, given that he _was_ breaking and entering, he kicked back on Shiro’s bed.

“Keith,” he said, pointing to his chest.

Shiro frowned.

“Keith,” the boy repeated, more insistent. “You?” He asked, poking a finger at Shiro’s chest.

 _Ah._ Shiro pulled up his ID. _Takashi Shirogane, “Shiro.” Number 378-928K._

“Can’t read that,” Keith said, looking at him as if he were done. “All I see is numbers. Can’t you say it?”

Shiro looked at him blankly, which seemed to frustrate the boy. He poked the taller man in the chest and then grabbed him by the nose, pulling him forward. Shiro startled – this much human contact was rare, even among the closest of friends, but the kid apparently had no problem with tugging him around. Keith pressed two fingers against the tightly-buttoned collar of Shiro's uniform.

“You have a voice box, idiot. You should use it,” he said. He grabbed Shiro’s flesh hand and mirrored the action on himself, pressing two of Shiro’s fingers to his throat. Shiro’s eyes widened when he felt the vibration beneath Keith’s skin as he spoke.

“See?” Keith said. “A-a-ah. Try it.”

Shiro swallowed thickly. This wasn’t right. People didn’t speak – they hadn’t spoken in _decades_. This was so wrong, so strange, he wasn’t even sure whether he could bring his voice to work. He knew he had one – he had learned that much in anatomy class. He knew that people had used it to speak years ago. But this? This was completely abnormal.

“Ah,” he breathed, softly, so softly, there was almost no sound to it. “Ah.”

“Louder,” Keith said, a satisfied smirk on his face. Clearly, breaking the rules was something he really appreciated. “Come on. A-a-ah.”

“A-a-ah,” Shiro repeated. “A-a-ah!”

This was exhilarating. Shiro felt the anxiety coil in his stomach – if someone, if his neighbors heard him do this, he'd be removed from his job and cast away from society. But the way Keith's eyes seemed to glimmer when Shiro did it when he let his scratchy, unused voice free… it made Shiro feel like his lingering, latent dissatisfaction with his life made sense. Because there _was_ more out there.

“A-a-ah!”

“ _Shh– idiot!”_ Keith’s hand slapped over Shiro’s mouth, muffling the unnecessarily (and dangerously) loud sound. “Are you _crazy_?” He hissed, eyeing Shiro with obvious displeasure. “They’ll catch us if you do that and then we’ll both get executed!”

By Keith’s tone, Shiro knew he had screwed up. Too loud, he thought to himself, wondering whether the there was a limit on the loudness of a human’s voice.

 _Sorry,_ Shiro typed quickly. He didn’t want to incur the wrath of this weird young man.

Keith just growled in frustration at him. Clearly, he needed a lesson in letters.

* * *

“So, how was work?”

No matter how many times it had happened, Shiro still managed to startle. He really shouldn’t have – he knew the sight that would greet him: Keith Kogane, the kid who spoke, sitting comfortably on his bed.

 _Work was,_ Shiro typed, “good,” he finished, punctuating his statement with a smiling emoji.

Keith snorted. “You really need to practice your speech more, you know that?”

 _Maybe you need to practice your reading,_ Shiro replied back, stubbornly keeping his lips pressed together. He glanced at the smattering of candy bar wrappers on the bed. _I see you helped yourself._

Keith shrugged in response. “You don’t mind. You have more food than you know what to deal with, Honor Roll.” He gave Shiro a hard look which Shiro had learned to interpret as actually casually teasing, rather than an expression of ire. That was the way Keith expressed affection – Shiro had no idea what kinds of social cues the speakers lived by.

Nevertheless, he ended up sitting on the bed next to Keith and sharing the last cocoa bar.

“Fah-mily?” Shiro asked cautiously, once they finished eating, pointing at Keith. “Kee-eef’s, fah-mily?”

Keith gave him an amused look. “My family? Fa-a-amily.”

“Fa-a-amily,” Shiro replicated dutifully. “Fa-a-amily.”

"I don't have one," Keith said, shaking his head. "My dad died when I was a kid, and my mom left right after I was born."

Shiro nodded. It was still a little hard to understand all these sounds, but Keith made sure to speak slowly for his benefit. It was kind of him. "Are you sad?" He asked, licking his lips.

Keith shrugged. “Not really. It was a long time ago. And you? I saw the picture,” he said, pointing his finger to the holo on the wall, the only one Shiro had with his mother. “She’s pretty, your mom. She’s your mom, right?”

Shiro replied with a mute nod. “Mom.”

“What happened?” Keith asked.

“Dead,” Shiro said, his voice hoarse. That was interesting, he noted in passing; the way his throat seemed to close up around the word, even though his voice box had almost gotten used to speech with Keith's persistent training. He hadn’t experienced that before.

“Sorry,” Keith said, a little more subdued. He looked around the room, seemingly trying to come up with something to change the topic of the conversation. Clearly, Shiro noted, Keith wasn’t as blasé about people’s feelings as he came off at first.

He found himself staring at the side of Keith's neck, where his black hair curled just so, brushing the milky skin. Suddenly, it struck him how different Keith looked. How… free.

“Pretty,” he said, without thinking.

Keith’s eyebrow’s shot up. “Huh?”

Shiro swallowed thickly. “Pretty,” he finally repeated. “You’re pretty.”

Keith snickered. “Handsome,” he corrected.

Shiro rolled his eyes. “I speak… English. Pretty.” _Did I stutter?_

“Oh, really?”

Suddenly, Shiro found himself with a lapful of Keith. The young man was straddling him, his hands perched on Shiro’s shoulders with no room for ambivalence. “Why don’t you tell me how pretty I am?” He crooned into Shiro’s ear, and the man felt a shiver go down his spine for the sheer _closeness_ of him.

Nobody in Shiro’s world had ever touched him this way.

“Very pretty,” he breathed, his newly-found voice barely there. “So pretty.” He reached up to tuck a strand of Keith’s longish, non-regulation hair behind his ear. The violet eyes of the young man, so strange, so foreign, looked down at him with humor.

“Show me how pretty I am,” Keith said, those violet eyes flashing.

Shiro didn't know how. He had never touched anyone like this before. He had never felt like this before. His hand slipped down to Keith's waste, and he noted how thin the younger man was – small, bony, yes, but also muscular, in a subtle yet powerful way. He was used to surviving, Shiro realized.

Somehow, that made Keith all the more attractive. It was the danger written all over his body.

“Don’t know… how,” Shiro confessed, and those eyes didn’t laugh at him – instead, something behind them changed, and the next thing he knew, Keith covered his lips with his own.

Shiro had read about this – ancient courting rituals, things beyond the scope of modern society, and yet, he knew now why they had done it: kissing Keith felt like coming home. He sighed softly, barely vocalizing it, and his mechanical hand cupped the back of Keith’s head.

The young man seemed surprised by his boldness, and yet, he only shifted closer. Shiro broke away with a startled moan.

That was when Keith chuckled. “Feel that?” He asked, gyrating his hips once just so, and Shiro could do little else but whimper. “That’s how we talk where I come from. That’s how we show others how much we like them.”

“I like it,” Shiro said quickly. He noticed with surprise just how shallow his breathing was. Keith’s proximity was intoxicating. “What… next?”

“You know what comes next,” Keith said, with a superior arch of his eyebrow. He moved his hips downward just a tad, making Shiro lose control of his breathing yet once more. “You know it. You can feel it.”

* * *

They lay in Shiro’s bed together, Keith snuggled against the side of his chest. Shiro’s thumb was absently stroking Keith’s ribs.

“That was good,” Shiro finally said, his voice hoarse from all the screaming he had been doing into his pillow.

Kieth looked at him wryly. “Just good?”

“Very good,” Shiro confirmed, glancing down at him. “I like you.”

Keith snorted, muffling the sound in Shiro’s shoulder.

“I gathered as much. Even learned how to speak for me, weirdo.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://haganenoheichou.tumblr.com) and [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/haganenoheichou) for more updates!


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